Antonio J. Convit, MD

Our laboratory has focused on understanding the impact of obesity and associated increased cardiac risk and metabolic dysregulation (ranging from insulin resistance to type 2 diabetes mellitus) on brain structural and functional integrity including the risk of dementia.  For example, we established across various age groups, ranging from adolescents to middle-aged and elderly adults, that obesity-related prediabetes and diabetes are associated with impaired cognitive function, hippocampal and cortical atrophy, white matter abnormalities as well as increases in cerebrospinal fluid.  More recently, our laboratory has been trying to ascertain whether these brain abnormalities associated with obesity are reversible with large weight loss and how the reductions in cardiometabolic risk resultant from the weight loss may help explain the brain changes. 

Metabolic dysregulation from obesity and pre-clinical stages of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) share brain biomarkers, such as reductions in cognitive function, brain glucose utilization, and structural brain abnormalities including hippocampal volume reductions and white matter dysfunction.  In a second line of research in our lab, in close collaboration with Ricardo Osorio in Psychiatry, we are looking to ascertain whether the expected brain improvements from massive weight loss are associated with improvements in biofluid markers of Alzheimer’s Disease, including beta amyloid and tau levels in plasma.

In a third line of research, in collaboration with Ricardo Osorio in our department and Ryan Brown in Radiology, we are evaluating neuroimaging measures of brain metabolic health and age that could be used as markers of brain reserve or resilience, which could be used as outcomes for intervention trials to optimize healthy brain aging.